Microsoft was widely criticised for giving too much air time to a raft of TV watching features at the expense of games when it first revealed the Xbox One console last year, which was seen as an even bigger misstep when it was learnt that most of those features would only be functional in the United States upon the console's launch.

It's now looking like that expanded TV functionality will be making its way to other parts of the world soon, with a new Xbox Wire blog post announcing that the Xbox One's OneGuide, universal remote features, and the extended suite of Kinect voice commands that goes with them are coming to Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K --starting with an invitational preview program for "select Xbox Live members" before being made publicly available.

Those select Xbox Live members will see:

• An enhanced TV watching experience (that’s already available in the U.S.), which sees TV listings added to OneGuide, alongside Favorites and App Channels. This will work for people in Europe and Canada who have their TV connected to Xbox One via HDMI-in.
  
• More control over Xbox One, their TV, and set-top box, including setting new recordings and watching recorded content from their DVR, all from a tablet or smart phone. Xbox SmartGlass also adds a cool new feature to show the most recently-watched channels.
  
• New Kinect voice commands in Europe and Canada (already available in the U.S.) which let you control your set-top box and other AV equipment.

A video presentation with Xbox's Larry Hryb and Ben Smith talks about the features in more depth, but unfortunately neither the video or the blog bear any mention of Australia, so it looks like we'll have to continue to wait down here.